Life after conservative faith: the defectors who leave ultra-Orthodox communities

[cbayer]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/27/ultra-orthodox-judaism-defectors-new-york

A growing number of men and women are choosing to leave their overbearing religious sects behind – but they encounter new challenges in secular New York


Followers of ultra-Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Moses Teitelbaum of the Satmar Hassidim pack the Congregation Yetev Lev D’Satmar. Photograph: Mike Segar/Reuters

Farah Halime
Friday 27 March 2015 16.35 GMT Last modified on Friday 27 March 2015 17.16 GMT

Shulem Deen swipes through photos of his eldest daughter’s wedding with a look of pride on his face. He points to a modestly-dressed bride sitting stiffly next to her husband. “I know how nervous they felt,” he says.

Deen is only guessing; he wasn’t invited to his daughter’s wedding. These are not official photos – they were taken clandestinely by people he asked to infiltrate the ceremony.

Deen, 40, left the cloistered ultra-Orthodox Jewish enclave of New Square, a village in Rockland County, New York, seven years ago. He is one of a minority that has stepped off the derech, the devout and religious path.

Like others who have turned their back on the Hasidic way of life, Deen has lost contact with his five children and has been ostracized from the community for being a heretic. At the same time, he has found it difficult to assimilate to non-Hasidic culture and worries he comes across as strange to New Yorkers.

more at link

[edhopper]

1. Interesting article

Let's be frank, Hasidism is a cult, that it has the support of the Government here and in Israel doesn't make it any less a cult.

They are as literalist as the most fundamental Christians.

I feel bad for those that leave, as in all cults, they are shunned. But I feel good they have opened themselves up to a more open way of thinking.

(that is thinking about God in such a narrow restrictive way)

[cbayer]

2. There are extremists at the edges of pretty much all organized groups.

I also feel for those that decide to leave. I recently heard a really heartbreaking interview with an Amish woman who left.

Those that do are highly motivated.

[edhopper]

3. I'm not sure what you are saying about the edges

Are you saying the Hasidim are the extreme edge of Judaism, or there are extremist within the Hasidim?

[cbayer]

4. Both. I think Hasidim is at the extreme edge and there are extremists within Hasidim.

[edhopper]

5. Yes

both true.

[cbayer]

6. My first exposure to this group was in NYC.

They were very unfamiliar to me. The most striking thing to me was how insular they were. Even when I was interacting with them through work, I had never met people who used so few words.

[edhopper]

7. You have to understand

they don't even regard other Jews as "real Jews". and their laws about dealing with outsiders are restrictive.

also you being a woman is a problem for the men.

[cbayer]

8. I came to understand the issues they had with women.

I was so accustomed to shaking hands and quickly learned that that was not cool. I also could not be in a room alone with them ever.

Generally, they lived in their own communities, but I at one point I had a fellow student living upstairs and he left phone ringer on during the sabbath but didn't answer it, lol.

The main concern I have is the impact they are having on politics in Israel. In that way, they are very much like the US fundamentalists.

[edhopper]

9. Yes

Netenyahu would not have won without them.

I worry about their impact on politics here in NY, their clout is disconcerting.

[LiberalAndProud]

10. The people who leave give me hope for our future.

Some modicum of sanity seems to survive in even the most restrictive environments.